Joy Divis– Sorry, Peter Hook & The Light Recreate Unknown Pleasures, “Transmission” and More (2013)

Venue: Katedrala / Kino Šiška / Ljubljana
Concert date: 03/22/2013
Attendance: 750-800
Ticket price: €19

I can’t stand people who hate tribute bands from the bottom of their hearts. Honestly, I can relate to them the most. I can’t stand people who love tribute bands and pack out the likes of Cvetličarna for the yearly Guns to Roses and similar shows a bit less. And it’s also not quite clear to me how any musician with a shred of self-respect can let themselves make money off someone else’s music, someone else’s words, someone else’s genius. But the thing I understand least of all is the claim that Peter Hook & The Light are just one more »tribute-to« act, a project, whatever you want to call it, that justifies its entire existence with potential cash alone.

Of course, it’s a far cry from what I overheard from 15-year-olds in front of Kino Šiška, that they would »finally get to see Joy Division«. But Peter Hook and his lineup get damn close to the real thing. Which is of course also the result of him honing his own music, singing lyrics that he already helped Ian Curtis sing back in the late 70s of the last century, and simply being, plain and simple, a »Joy Division guy«. So Peter Hook & The Loght are exactly that – Peter Hook & The Light, who on the current tour play the music of the legendary Joy Division.

Peter Hook didn’t always intend to create this project; a pile of events led him there – above all, he put together a lineup for a one-off tribute to Ian Curtis on the anniversary, because a bunch of others had failed to pull it off. Hook’s event then sold out right away and was so widely praised afterwards that Peter Hook saw a chance for something beautiful, something he’d probably always secretly wanted, since he clearly still carries Joy Division deep, deep in his heart (you can read more about this and everything else Hook-related in the interview we did at RockLine a good week before the gig at Kino Šiška).

And so Peter Hook & The Light were born. Luck (and the ŠKUC crew, of course) brought him to Ljubljana, where it turned out there are more people hungry for this kind of music than anyone might have expected. Hooky was greeted by a full hall, which had first been treated to a documentary about the band – well, some kind of documentary, which was really a bizarre mosaic of music videos, clips from various other films and documentaries about the band, and interview snippets, all woven together with weird psychedelic visuals. Anyway, I have no idea what the point of the documentary was, exactly. In the end all that was left was waiting for Hooky, and wait we did – a strange playlist full of totally irrelevant, outsider tracks (a whole pile of country hits) finally walked him onto the stage around half past nine.

Peter Hook is an extremely interesting figure. That’s clear already from the interview linked above. He definitely radiates his very own kind of charisma, a homey sort of ease; you can picture him at a bar watching football without any trouble (everyone in Joy Division was a huge football fan, Ian Curtis for instance was a big Manchester City supporter). He also definitely belongs behind a microphone, since he has the necessary presence. But it’s very, very different from Ian’s image. That one is far darker, more depressive, more closed-off, more inaccessible, more… uncomfortable, and therefore definitely more thrilling. Hooky puts all his cards on the table, arms outstretched; he sings the lyrics with all his heart, but that may be exactly what doesn’t fit these lyrics – that they’re delivered so directly, that they’re as accessible as Hooky makes them. That’s also the biggest difference between Ian and Peter – inaccessibility versus accessibility, a kind of mystery versus candor, ease and homeliness versus alienation and constriction. But Hooky surprised us on a whole other level. I swear – if you’d only listened to the show now and then, you could have sworn it was Ian Curtis himself singing. That’s how well Peter Hook embodies him vocally. Sure, age shows and his vocal cords and lungs give out on the heavier and especially lower frequencies (Hooky doesn’t have a voice as low as Curtis’s to begin with), so the vocals don’t come across as deep, resonant and dynamic, even when Hook nails the note perfectly. That’s why he also leaned on vocal effects quite a few times (mostly reverb and delay), which Curtis certainly didn’t exactly make use of. But those effects weren’t there just because Hooky’s voice wasn’t up to it – they had one more very special role. The Joy Division tracks, despite their great authenticity, were still reinterpreted a little. That applies above all to the sound itself.

So (last but not least) Peter Hook approached his music from another angle as well. His lineup didn’t just polish the songs, it gave them a new sonic coat, which definitely changed that »closed-in« Joy Division feel, that somewhat cramped sound. In fact, the sound was transformed completely in line with Hooky’s presence. The lineup already hinted at it – besides the classic setup of drummer, keyboardist, guitarist and bassist (Hook), there was one more bassist, so Hook doesn’t have to bother with the bass lines while he sings. But that wasn’t his main role, at least as far as the final result goes, because when Hook and Jack Bates (the second bassist) played at the same time, the hall was bursting at the seams, especially thanks to Hook’s bass. Such a polished sound, so mighty, so booming… actually, in retrospect, bass was always Joy Division territory, definitely more than the other frequency ranges (maybe that’s typical of the whole genre). With the help of some sound-engineering wizardry, the whole band also got to an extremely rich, full, almost baroque sound, which never graced Joy Division. Not that this is bad – theirs was a very specific style, a more basic, more raw way of delivering music. That’s why I’d hardly say this sonic coat was mainly there to update the band’s sound, but rather for some downright philosophical approaches to »live« acoustics, including matching the frontman’s image.

Maybe that even put some people off the show a bit; not me. It was an incredibly emotional, high-energy performance in which the phenomenal Peter Hook, who gave it everything he had, interpreted the material in a very personal way while staying remarkably true to the Joy Division legacy. The whole thing was a surprise – for how well he can imitate Ian’s voice, and for how personally he actually sees the music of his former band, how that music looks through his eyes, how he has always looked at the whole creative process. And the entire Peter Hook & The Light project gave him the chance to bring a big part of his philosophy (perhaps even from the late 70s) into the overall sound, even though he’s singing Ian’s lyrics. Still, even though he stayed true to the Joy Division legacy, playing the entire album Unknown Pleasures plus of course all the must-have classics like »Transmission« and »Love Will Tear Us Apart« (which he also used to close the show in grand style) and lesser-known ones like »The Drawback« (a song from the Warsaw days), he opened the show with the New Order track »In a Lonely Place«, letting us know the band’s next tour will be dedicated to just that – New Order.

To wrap up the comparisons too – if you draw parallels between the band names, Joy Division would be Ian Curtis & The Dark. That’s how I’d sum up the Peter Hook & The Light show at Kino Šiška. And yet, despite all the analogies about a different »feel«, a different charisma and image of the frontman, about the overall revamped sound, we felt exactly what we came for. We felt Joy Division.

Setlist

In a Lonely Place (New Order song)
No Love Lost
Digital
Disorder
Day of the Lords
Candidate
Insight
New Dawn Fades
She’s Lost Control
Shadowplay
Wilderness
Interzone
I Remember Nothing
—encore—
Heart and Soul
Isolation
Twenty Four Hours
The Eternal
—2nd encore—
The Drawback
Transmission
Love Will Tear Us Apart

Photo gallery